


After the Storm

by CFonticola



Category: Vingt mille lieues sous les mers | Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sickfic, Touch-Starved, the pining comes with the territory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 11:20:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29488929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CFonticola/pseuds/CFonticola
Summary: In the aftermath of the storm on the Gulf Stream, Professor Aronnax finds Captain Nemo in an unexpected predicament.
Relationships: Pierre Aronnax & Capitaine Nemo | Pierre Aronnax & Captain Nemo
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Post part II, chapter 19. Because stupid angsty mysterious captains who stand around in the rain must suffer the consequences of their actions. 
> 
> (Namely being fussed over by the sensible professors they try not to be so attached to. That's it that's the consequences.)

It was the day after we had briefly faced the storm together, in early evening, that its aftermath arranged for me perhaps the strangest encounter with the Captain that I have had in my time aboard the _Nautilus._

I was in my cabin, going over my notes of our journey under the waves, an activity which occupied me often in those quiet evenings without company. Sifting, perhaps, through my time with Captain Nemo as some fish sift through the sandy floor of the ocean for their feed - except that I was sifting for some morsel of truth, a kernel of insight in the seemingly endless volume of experiences, wonders, the world opened to me by this strange man. I still knew so little, and all my knowledge seemed altogether like the traces of peaks in the fog, insufficient to chart anything of the shrouded shoreline much less the continent beyond. In the midst of this revision and reverie, I heard a sound that, sudden and startling, took me several moments to place.

It was a sneeze. Now that may seem like a very small revelation, but the reader will recall that I was on a submarine vessel, some hundreds of miles from any flora, fauna, or any particulates of dust or other debris that may trigger this most basic and involuntary of human actions. I was just coming to the somewhat disorienting realization that I had indeed not heard one single sneeze in all my time aboard, when a repeat came. This was a heavier one and, joined by a brief string of coughs, gave the impression not of a chance respiratory convulsion, but of miserable ill health.

At the very same moment, I saw that the door between my cabin and the Captain’s was ajar: the sounds had been coming to me through it.

“Ah,” thought I: “then the mystery is no mystery at all! When a man spends the better part of the night drenched, battered, and frozen by a storm at open sea, what is more natural than that he should catch cold? Even if that man is Captain Nemo, whose constitution is nearly the match of that of his boat - but though the _Nautilus_ may be iron, its captain is flesh and blood!”

Indeed, strange as it may have been after all I had seen, I was finding it increasingly hard to overlook this last fact.

As soon as the thought passed through my head, my distraction was complete and any hope of returning to my notes was lost. I sat nearly breathless, waiting for any another slip of sound from beyond that door. I was forced to confess that the idea of this extraordinary man fighting such an ordinary ailment riveted my imagination. Would he dismiss it entirely, whom the torments of suffocation under the polar ice had not so much as moved? Or did the plain, practically universal humanity of this plight, reach past the grand part of his mind and induce the yearning, as the most mundane miseries often did most acutely, for simple comfort?

The last time I had intruded upon the Captain in his cabin was all too fresh in my mind: our conversation had been ugly, and now I could not help but think it had been some outburst of painful emotion caused by it that had led him to subject himself to the storm. But with that thought I reasoned that if my actions had, even in part, caused his current condition, it behoved me to at least take some notice of it. I had disturbed him: had been disturbing him for some time, with my unwelcome presence in his sanctum of the _Nautilus_. The thought that I had done so at detriment to his very health put me in an electrified rush of guilt. I went rushing thoughtlessly to the door.

At my abrupt entrance, the Captain looked sharply up from his desk. My anxiety was heightened to find how visibly unwell he looked: those penetrating eyes were dim, shot with scarlet blood vessels; the complexion, though too dark to show the paleness or flush an illness might induce in a fairer man, was sallow and marked faintly with sweat; his breath, a subtle rasp through parted lips. His voice when he spoke was husky, betraying some congestion of the sinuses and a swelling of the pharynx and larynx that I suspected quite painful.

“Is there any problem, Sir?”

It took me some moments to gather myself.

“I must apologise for intruding upon you,” I said at last. “But Captain - are you quite all right?”

“Perfectly,” answered he: his tone cool and masterful, but his thickened voice not entirely its equal.

“Then I must apologise again, but I think you are mistaken.”

“Oh?” said Captain Nemo, now arch. He stood up from his desk to face me: rather close up, despite the size of the cabin. I noted that one of his hands remained on the desk, as if to brace him. “Do you say, Professor Aronnax, that I am unable to judge my own state of being?”

In this instant, as soon as he had finished speaking, the Captain whirled back away and snatched up a handkerchief from his desk. He brought it with both hands to his face and wrenched into it with a third, barely restrained sneeze.

I would not have better opportunity: I seized my moment.

“Evidently not, if you would call this ‘perfectly’! How long have you been sneezing like this?”

“Does it concern you?”

“As a doctor, I must say it does.”

“It should not,” He said it with nonchalance I judged sincere, though then paused to blow his nose with a sound that gave me no encouragement at all as for the state of his respiratory tract. “The _Nautilus_ is in safe waters; her crew are, as you know, able and experienced. Even if my health is briefly compromised, nothing else would be.”

His dismissal did nothing to lessen my agitation: too often, I thought, had I seen him show too little regard to his own well-being. It was one thing to do this in the service of some cause, some worthy act, where the limitations of Man’s mortal vessel may not suffer to impede the purposeful ambition of his mind. But this, I could credit to nothing but this man’s prideful stubbornness. Perhaps it was the instincts of a physician, but I could not allow myself to be so easily dismissed.

“Sir,” I said. “You will not like my saying so, but as I am a doctor, and moreover as your companion on this voyage - “

“An unwilling one!” said he, amid coughing into his fist. “Or haven’t you made that clear?”

“Even so - ! I will say it. You are not your _Nautilus._ She never wearies, that is true, nor does she take ill. But for you both are possible, and, I judge, in a state of worrying co-incidence. I have been thinking for some time that you demand too much of your body: this cold you have caught is its cry for reprieve.”

Anger blazed through him, and he made to draw straight and, I suspected, throw me out of his cabin. But the cough, increasing, now shuddered hard all through his frame. He was unable to reply. My words ran away from me, “Yesterday, when I joined you in the storm - “

“That,” Captain Nemo snapped, having barely caught his breath, “was a terrible foolishness. One I warn you not to repeat.”

“If I was foolish to risk an hour, how much riskier to endure half the night?”

“I know these storms, Sir. The risk that you so fear is to me an old friend. I ask none of my crew to bear it with me; I do not ask it of you. Do you think it would please me to see you battered to death by the waves, or chilled and wasting away with fever? No, Monsieur Aronnax. The storms, I face alone!”

I stood shaken again, unprepared for this outburst; the Captain, too, I saw, had not planned to be thus carried away, and had been left quite badly winded. He sat back in his chair and closed his eyes with a visible attitude of exhaustion the likes of which I had never seen from him before.

What was in the mind of this singular man, who so jealousy declared his solitude, yet had all this time been concerned with my well-being? What had been in that mind yesterday on the deck, when I had believed him unaware, unmindful of my presence? My thoughts raced, yet I could not permit myself to be distracted from the core of the matter. Yesterday, I had risked my life to witness him at that most sublime moment: I could not now turn away from his most mundane humanity.

Setting a different course, I asked, “Do you derive medicine from the sea, Sir?”

“Yes, though not often,” the Captain spoke in almost instinctive reply. Although his voice was very hoarse, I had gambled correctly that he would readily answer any question of mine on his innovations aboard the _Nautilus_. “My crew are hardy men, and the ailments of the land rarely troubles them. I derive a drug from certain algae, not known on the surface for reason of the depths in which it grows, good against pain and inflammation; another, from a the innards of a sea slug, induces a peaceful sleep. With the addition of alcohol distilled from seaweed for the cleaning of chance wounds, we have needed no other. So you see, Sir: the ocean furnishes my apothecary as readily, as fully as it furnishes my larder.”

I had, I realized, half expected among the wonders of the _Nautilus_ to be a cure for the common cold. “Have you employed any of these remedies?”

“Many times, to excellent effect.”

“And for yourself, Captain, here and now?”

“What need?”

“Only that they may do you good.”

“Good!” said he with sharp mockery, as though awakening suddenly to my purpose. “Is this now a care of yours, who wants nothing but to be gone from my _Nautilus?_ Leave me, Monsieur. I am, as you say, ill and weary. I have no patience for your company.”

No dismissal could be clearer. Though I could not fail to note that into this brusque outburst was also folded a confession: the Captain was in poor state. What part his physical discomfort played in the foul temper he was in, I couldn’t tell. Yet even as I left his cabin, it was clear to me that he will not, under any circumstance, seek any aid for relief of his condition, even from his incomparably loyal crew. No: though he trusted them with the magnificence of the _Nautilus_ , the mortal foibles of his own body were another matter. What was more, I knew there was no other trained physician on board.

I can hardly say what possessed me, then, but exiting the saloon I did something that I would hardly have thought imaginable under other circumstances. I wandered the ship a little while until I found a member of that crew, and adopting a tone of perfect confidence, said to him: “Captain Nemo has granted me leave to access your store of medicine for the treatment of one of my companions. Here is what I will need.”

Did I fool that fellow, who looked at me with a face as sealed as the ship’s hatch separating us from the world without? I do not know nor suppose I would ever find out. But whatever his reasons, within minutes he had furnished me with all I asked for.

I returned to find the door between mine and Captain Nemo’s cabins shut, although from the position of the handle, unlocked. Still, to barge directly back in was to do nothing but invite escalation in the tension between us. I was forced to marshal my patience, consider my approach, and sit to listen with a heavy heart to the sounds of the man suffering in the room just next to my own.


	2. Chapter 2

I sat thus in my cabin, in nervous waiting, for close to an hour. I tried to pass the time by examining the properties of the drugs I had been given - their colour, consistency, odours and so forth - and speculating on their composition, but the bulk of my attention was on the door to Captain Nemo’s room. At first it yielded nothing but silence, and I began to worry that he had left. But gradually, it became clear that he was present, and silent only by concentrated effort. I heard snatches of stuttering breath, now and then the hint of some paroxysm suppressed by no doubt painful violence. His body and his will were in bitter conflict, and I could not say which would win out - only sit in squirming guilt, knowing myself to be the direct cause of this struggle.

Yet even as my agitation grew, my frustration with the Captain’s recalcitrance dissipated. I reflected instead on the melancholy that had seemed to take root in him since the Pole. That maudlin isolation, terribly exacerbated since the loss of his crewmate to the devilfish. My own words came back to me: Captain Nemo had been making demands of himself exceeding even his prodigious capacities. I no longer felt the need to wring some surrender out of him, only to wonder if it was within my power to offer him any ease.

At last, I heard the the conflict resolved with a harsh cough from beyond the door, the sound of lungs in open rebellion against their very owner. In its wake came a sigh - a sound of total resignation. A universal sound. Its misery the same here in the depths of the ocean as it would be in any sickroom within any terrestrial country.

There in his solitude, this exceptional man permitted himself this much. Had he forgotten my presence nearby? Or did the sickness wear on him as no more extravagant challenge could?

My mind returned to its earlier ruminations on the want of simple comfort. I rose to open the door.

My surprise may be imagined when, direct upon doing so, I found myself face to face with Captain Nemo. He stood in the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest, seeming to have anticipated my decision exactly. But his presence was not blocking the passage with any aura of mastery: weariness voided the power of his tall form, shadowed his remarkable eyes. The suppression of his symptoms even for a short hour had clearly drained his last reserves. The great vitality that seemed ever to animate him seemed ebbed now to a restlessness of the most frustrating sort: the bed behind him showed in its rumpled covers that he tossed and turned there for some time, denied the relief of sleep.

“So you return, Professor,” he rasped.

Poor state indeed! The last of my chagrin left me, and with it all reserve.

“Sir,” said I, “I regret that I must impose - “

“Do you, Sir?” said the Captain sardonically.

“Captain Nemo, I am yours to command; but you have always permitted me, when I doubted your plans, to voice my doubts and be answered with reason and good sense. I ask no more now than the very same. I grant that your cold is not serious, but that is no reason to neglect it until it becomes so. I have here your own drugs, which you know are effective - “

His gaze upon me, which I had noted was glassy with exhaustion, turned abruptly terrifying. “By whose leave?”

"Your own, which I have wagered I will receive, albeit retroactively, once you realize the necessity.”

His eyes did not cool. “Have you the habit of making dangerous wagers, Monsieur Aronnax?”

“If I do, Captain,” I said, quite gently, “I know where I have acquired it.”

I was astonished to see that these words caught him flat-footed; his anger wavered, as a candle flickers, and briefly he looked at me as though seeing me for the first time.

My courage wavered similarly, so unexpected was his response. All I could think of to do was plunge ahead. “Moreover - if you won’t permit me to call myself your companion, I think, Sir, I may nonetheless lay some claim to being your guest. While we may be your prisoners, we have also greatly benefitted from your hospitality - myself most of all, being inducted into your world of unimaginable wonders. You have allowed Master Land to repay a debt with the stroke of his harpoon to that shark in Ceylon. Very well - we each have our trades. If there is no other kind feeling between us, I ask that you permit me to repay some of my own debt now.”

Captain Nemo’s look was inscrutable. Those marvels of the marine world I would watch through the saloon window, so dear to me yet so utterly mysterious, may have met the same look from my eyes.

At last, an ironic twist lifted one corner of his lips.

“Ah, Sir,” he murmured. “All this over a head cold? Do you imagine I’ve known no greater suffering in my life? That I have not…”

He seemed to shake himself; to quite suddenly, slam shut what had nearly drifted open. While I was still reeling at what revelations I may have come so near, he half turned away, beckoning me inside.

“Well, doctor, I put myself in your hands.”

In my hands! Though I had dared aim for this very response, I could hardly believe it. I drifted into Captain Nemo’s stateroom in an embarrassing state of reverence, having to call on all my medical training to ground myself in the task before me.

True to his word, once within his cabin, the Captain allowed me to look him over more closely; that which was most important, to listen at his chest and ascertain to my satisfaction that no inflammation was present in the lungs. This illness was a discomfort, not a danger, but a very considerable one. He was chilled, sore in every muscle, and miserably congested. A warm bath was the surest course of treatment that came to mind, but instantly I knew better than to suggest that Captain Nemo leave the refuge of his cabin. All I could do would have to be done here, with only I as witness.

Being unfamiliar with the drugs, I had no choice but to leave Captain Nemo to measure out his own doses; though I questioned him at length about their qualities, and was satisfied that those measures would suffice at least to relieve his symptoms enough to allow him sleep. Otherwise, I was forced to find the means at my disposal limited. I filled the basin in the cabin’s small water closet with boiling hot water - amply and swiftly provided by the _Nautilus_ ’s ingenious electrical apparatus - and instructed the Captain to stand inhaling the steam, hoping to soothe and open his airways. This soon induced a powerful fit of sneezing - that reflex more powerful, at need, than the mightiest man’s will or his pride. Quickly I retreated from the washroom and shut the door on the sight, if not the sounds - and I will admit I winced at every one! But when he at last emerged his respiration was much improved, so that I considered the endeavour a successful one.

Still, I was deeply disconcerted through my satisfaction. To see the Captain ill was bad enough: now I saw him downright dishevelled, flushed and sniffling. I feared he would dismiss me to spare his pride, which certainly could not tolerate this for long. But worse than that was the course of my own mind. For it struck me then that there was no treasure on the _Nautilus_ so rare as this glimpse of its master and commander in this most unpoised and human of conditions; that no secret of its engineering was greater than this vulnerable moment. And that, somehow, this diminished none of my fascination - that the sight of Captain Nemo at his most human rendered his superhuman accomplishments all the more astounding.

“Well, Professor?” he said, seeing me - very quietly, and I could not tell if this owed to a swollen throat, or weariness, or then something else - but there was an unaccustomed gentleness in his eyes. “Do you consider your debt paid?”

“Not until you are feeling recovered, Captain.”

“That will not happen tonight,” he said bluntly, and sat down on the bed to retrieve a fresh handkerchief from the bedside drawer.

The transition dismayed me: from staunch denial, to full acknowledgement that his illness was both present and lingering. Did he wish to deter me from my set course by other means? Appear ungrateful by not showing instant improvement, paint his care as a burdensome task I should shy from undertaking? 

But what manner of doctor would I be if I were to be so easily deterred - what guest - what companion!

It could not be abided. I knew now that fate has brought me into the presence of this remarkable man, not only to behold his triumphs, but, too, for this quieter purpose. The Captain now sat with his eyes shut, every inch of his form, which I had so often admired, speaking of the depths of his exhaustion. With a physician’s unthinking reflex, I touched my hand to his forehead.

The touch reassured me that he had no fever. Yet at the very brush of my hand to his brow, I felt Captain Nemo give one great shiver. I could feel that it possessed him from his skin, which I found too cold to rather than burning, down into his very bones. This was not the chill of illness, no ordinary symptom: I was feeling under my hand proof positive of that notion, that touch is crucial to the thriving of the human organism no less than food, sleep, air, its long deprivation akin to a suffocation of any other vital faculty.

I thought bafflingly of myself, with Ned Land and Conseil, standing on the platform of the _Nautilus_ gulping in oxygen after the South Pole. Thus was Captain Nemo now enthralled by the touch of my hand. How long had the man been suffocating?

In a deep shock by this revelation, I moved quickly when his breath caught once, the sign of an impending sneeze. He too turned swiftly away and ducked into the handkerchief, and the moment was broken.

When the Captain looked up at me again, I had still not regained my composure. I stood pinned in place, amazed, appalled - wanting, more than ever in my life, to offer the touch of my hand again, that now I realized no medicine could equal. Captain Nemo must have seen something of it in my face, for there flashed in his eyes a look of raw emotion, too fast and deep for me to name. Then at once he checked himself, his expression composing. To my dismay, he stood up from the bed.

“Well, Sir?” he asked again in that low voice, eerily soft. “I have no fever. My condition is improved. I have taken your medicine and, perhaps, it will indeed do me good. Is your doctor’s oath satisfied?”

My oath! Was that, he supposed, what kept me now at his side? Swallowing, I hoped not too visibly, I answered similarly quiet:

“As a doctor, I would perhaps be satisfied - but, Captain, as your fellow man, I implore you to lie down and rest.”

Again something wry curled his lip, and I cursed myself for a fool. What choice of words! How often, how strongly had Captain Nemo sought to make it clear to me that he was no fellow to humanity? But these claims made in cold rage and scornful conviction could not deter me from my own human instinct, perhaps the most primal of them all, one I believed even he not wholly impervious to: which is of the most essential inability to leave another in distress.

Did he understand this? Did my feeling reach him? I do not know. Even today I still cannot say. But I can say that he settled back onto the bed, lay down and pulled the rumpled covers over himself. He wanted, I think, to lie on his side and turn his back to me, but the horizontal posture caused his cough to flare up. It was only half sitting up, propped against the pillows, that he was able to breathe comfortably. By the time he was settled, the flagging of his energy was such that he showed no sign at all of protest when I tucked the covers around him. My poor Man of the Seas - for that was the thought that passed through my mind, which I can no more account for than for the softening of his face under my ministrations. Despite his sickness his eyes pierced me through as always, shadowed with sadness - and, I almost dare say it, with longing.

“You are kind, Professor” he murmured, in a voice unlike any I have ever heard from him. “And there is little room for kindness in the lands where men dwell.”

“Be that as it may," murmured I in return, “we are not on dry land, but aboard the _Nautilus_. Surely here, Captain, amid the life of the ocean we love, some kindness may be permitted?” And, possessed quite suddenly by my own words, I moved my hand to once more touch his. “Even for you?”

The shudder that ran through him under my touch was such that I feared I had at last made some fatal trespass. What was comfort to this man, who had severed himself from all humanity - and yet still felt most keenly its aches? I had no sense of anything at all I might say to him.

What a conundrum, what a cruel joke of the Creator - that Man is the only animal capable of speech, and yet at our moments of greatest emotion words confound us!

At length, no response came. The Captain’s eyes were shut. He lay back on his bed in perfect stillness. Though in the fine hand under mine, despite its fingers being loose, I felt a lingering, paralytic tension, its tonus very much akin to pain.

I finally withdrew my hand. This was no ordinary man by whose sickbed I was sitting: I had the frightful thought that I would now disturb his rest as I have his entire existence, serene in the ocean depths. I rose to my feet. All my instincts cried against it, but what were they but the instincts of a land-dweller - my mind still the social mind, my dreams still soothed by thoughts of others of my own kind watching over me with tender intent? No such dreams, no such thoughts were the lot of captain of the _Nautilus._ I left his bedside and went to the door. 

My hand was on the handle when Captain Nemo spoke up again.

“Professor Aronnax.”

His voice was faintly slurred now, and I thought that the medicine must be taking effect. But there was no mistaking that he was, yet, in his own right mind.

“Sir?”

“On my desk, you will find some notes of mine on some observations made in the Arabian Tunnel last year. They record the first journey through the passage. Is this of interest to you?”

“Yes, certainly, yes!”

“Then, so long as you give me your word that you will touch nothing else, you may sit to read them.” And, when I lingered a moment on stunned and baffled hope, made his intent clear, “You may stay here. With me.”

My hand on the door handle trembled. My heart leaped wildly within my chest. This was no mere gesture of scientific disclosure. I understood at once: this supreme misanthrope was asking me not to leave him alone with whatever demons haunted his sleep.

“I should be honoured, Captain,” I whispered.

No further words came from him. And so I sat myself at the desk, and for some time sat leafing through the notes. They were riveting, as I expected, and in another time I would certainly have forgotten all the world in my enthusiasm for the mysteries catalogued within in a sure and meticulous hand. Now, however, nothing held my attention more than the sound of Captain Nemo’s breathing as it slowed into the rhythm of sleep. This did not happen quickly. For an hour at least, I heard him shift and stir, sneezing now and then or giving a rasping cough. But my gut counselled patience, and I kept to the notes.

At last a period of quietude came. I turned in my seat, then carefully rose and approached the bed. I was certain that the Captain was sleeping, but this was not a peaceful sleep: his face was strained and frowning, sweat at his temples. His breathing was shallow and ragged. I thought of waking him. But how long, then, would it be before he settled again? The night was not endless. I could not bend the laws of heaven’s movements to grant him a few more hours of rest.

But smaller actions were within my power: and so, slow and very cautious, I reached my hand and brushed his hair back from his brow.

The effect was immediate, breath-taking in its swiftness. Calm seemed to flow over him from the very point of contact between us. He took a deep, clear breath; not daring to withdraw my touch, I watched him sink from the shallows of fitful near-waking into the serene and enveloping depths of true, restful slumber. 

How long I sat my vigil there, by the sick Captain Nemo’s side, I cannot say; even if I had counted the hours, I will not commit them, my thoughts, my feelings all through them to paper. I will say that I left before he woke, and that in light of all that came later, few things are stranger to me than the memory of that night. More than likely, I will not detail it in my book! But among all the other wonders of my journey, the memory of it lingers: the night when the spirit of the seas found solace in my presence, my care, and my touch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to think that this is canon compliant in that the storm in the Gulf Stream was a cathartic moment for Nemo, after which he was ready to try and open up to Aronnax again hence showing him the Avenger. So this would fit in the gap there. Except of course the British had to show up and ruin everything again. Damn it all!


End file.
